Hawke's Bay Today contributors column - June 25

Last Friday, the show went to the dogs. Literally.  

Friday was International Take your Dog to work day. So we decided to wake our dogs up abnormally early and Millie (Martins's dog) and Ella (Sarah's dog) joined us in the studio for the morning.  You couldn't find two more different mutts (they really are mutts, both adopted from Adopt a Dog Hawke's Bay).  While Millie was docile, very obedient and quite content to sit on her mat for the morning, Ella was haring around the studio sniffing everything in sight and assaulting Martin's legs with the aggressive wagging of her tail.  

Supposedly, taking your pooch to work with you has been proven to lead to "increased productivity and morale".  Not so.  We were quite distracted the entire morning making sure the dogs (mainly Ella) weren't chewing important cables, and that Ella wasn't eating Millie.  

Apparently taking your dog to the office leads to "improved relationships between co-workers".  No it doesn't.  After Ella had put Millie firmly in her place (on her mat) she then took to greeting every co-worker who dared to enter or even walk past the studio with a territorial bark, leaving no question that this was HER studio and anyone who entered would be subjected to a an extensive sniff and assault via her tail.

One workmate was too afraid to even enter the room, and communicated with us through a small crack in the door the entire morning. 

"Lower absentee rates" are another benefit to taking your dog to work. Again, no. If anything we almost needed a week off in stress leave to recover from our morning with the dogs.  

The morning definitely went better for Martin than Sarah.  

On top of Millie outshining Ella in the obedience stakes, she was also voted by our Facebook members as the cuter of the two. One Facebook member Nicole wrote “Martin’s dog is beautiful and Sarah’s looks like trouble in the making.”  Pretty accurate really. 

To top the day off, we did an online test where a site guesses your age based on your answers to different questions.  Martin’s age was predicted to be 18!  Sarah?  52. Perhaps we should switch dogs. Mr 18 should surely have the energetic one who can’t sit still, and Nana could take home Millie where they could both lie down and have a nap.